this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Got a new 4TB WD My Passport and have some concerns (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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So I'm not new to data hoarding but I am when it comes to the ins and outs and doing it properly. I have a few WD external hard drives that have all worked perfectly fine for years, pretty consistent with each one. I just bought a new WD 4TB My Passport and noticed it was a bit slower but not a deal breaker. I checked CrystalDiskInfo and saw that it was actually 4800 RPM instead of 5400. I can live with it being slightly slower but it also takes a second longer to respond after not using it for a minute. With all my other drives I can leave for a few minutes and go right back in and play a video without any delay, but this new drive has a delay to it if I let it idle for even a minute. So I downloaded WD Drive Utilities and turned off the sleep timer, that fixed the delay issue but then all of my drives had their LED lights constantly blinking. Usually with my drives the LEDs only blink when in use, but I wasn't using any of my drives and they were all blinking. They stopped blinking when I uninstalled the utilities app, but that brought back the sleep timer for the new drive and the delay is back.

So with the lower RPM than advertised and delay when idle, is it worth keeping this drive or should I return it? Or am I being too paranoid about these problems and the drive is fine?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's SMR, it'll be slow as hell and rearrange itself sometimes for days if you don't let it sleep. But there is no choice for 2.5" drives, at least if you want a somehow large size (and even for many worthless smaller sizes nowadays).

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Is that all it is? I just checked a list of CMR and SMR drives and my other Passport drives are also listed as SMR but run faster than this new one.